Snob Zones - Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate

Zusatztext “Lisa Prevost masterfully chronicles how suburban and rural communities raise land-use drawbridges to exclude not just racial minorities and the poor but also middle-class families and the young. The cost of such exclusion is huge! and Prevost makes a powerful case for greater inclusion to strengthen local economies and community vitality.” —Chuck Collins! author of 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do about It   “In Snob Zones ! Lisa Prevost elegantly reveals the senselessness of NIMBYism! and the myriad ways in which affluent communities! in the name of self-interest! harm themselves and American society. A must-read for people who give a damn and want to gain insights on how we can do better! for ourselves and our children.” —Sheryll Cashin! author of The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream   “From the exploits of savvy gadfly developers upending ritzy Connecticut suburbs with plans for high-density housing scattered amid posh colonial houses to an aging New Hampshire town struggling with deep-rooted prejudices! Prevost charts a national problem on a local level. . . . [H]ousing policy analysts and populists will nod in assent to her well-drawn critiques of the ‘fortress mentality’ that makes local restrictions understandable from within and unconscionable from without.” — Publishers Weekly “Prevost nicely connects the overarching trend of an ever more expensive housing market with a series of profiles of New England towns determined to bar all but the most costly single-family homes.” — Boston Real Estate Now   From the Hardcover edition. Informationen zum Autor Lisa Prevost is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times ! Boston Globe Magazine ! More ! Ladies’ Home Journal ! and other publications. A native New Englander! she has lived and worked as a reporter in four of the six New England states. She lives in Fairfield! Connecticut. Introduction This book began with a startling display of rude behavior. It was 2005, and I was covering a zoning hearing in Darien, Connecticut, an outwardly refined suburb known for its preppy, members-only mentality. This was a public hearing, meaning that the public was invited to come and complain about the development proposal under consideration. Rare is the human anywhere who shows up for one of these hours-long, weeknight meetings because they wish to compliment the developer. The citizens who do turn out are usually the handful of neighbors who live within view of the building site. But on this particular fall evening, the project in question was objectionable enough to have drawn a crowd of nearly three hundred. Businessmen fresh off the train, older women settled in with laps full of knitting or magazines, serious-faced young couples in hushed conversation—the chairs in the Town Hall auditorium were nearly full by the time I arrived. I had an inkling of how the evening was going to go before I even stepped through the door. As I walked across the dark parking lot, a man a few steps behind me greeted a local television cameraman like this: “I can’t believe you’re here. Why don’t you fucking shoot something else?” The developers received a similarly warm reception. Throughout their presentation, the audience loudly snickered and hissed. Now, this might not have been so surprising in some northern backwater or a scrappy blue-collar burb. But this was Darien, and this wasn’t just some average audience. This audience was made up of people who live in one of the most highly educated, exceedingly affluent communities in the country. These were people who had presumably learned their manners early on and refined them over time at one of the eight members-only clubs in town. An...

Product details

• Authors: Lisa Prevost
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.07.2015, delayed
• EAN: 9780807033296
• ISBN: 978-0-8070-3329-6
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Law > International law, foreign law